Went to the range today with my camera. I shanked about half of my first few dozen shots. After taking a look at some of the swings, I realized my butt was coming off the wall a bit, so I cleaned that up. Instantly started making better contact.

I thought that my backswing feelings were becoming natural, but the after I stopped using the feelings, my backswing reverted. Bad Key 1.

On the plus side, my Key 3 was decent. That's (the right one) actually the best pic I've ever seen with my driver. The iron one is kind of meh, but better than this time last year.

On the bad side, I developed a wicked over the top move. Here's it in .gif form, because it's 2013 and this is the internet.

There are some other issues to clean up. My weight shift is a bit wonky, my left leg goes substantially inward on the backswing, and my right knee flexes out rather than towards the target at A4.25. Those are down the list though.

A little more knee flex at setup. A little less torso angle (which will happen automatically with a bit more knee flex).

Now two things:

Fully "prop" your right hip up and back slightly. The key is to get it up - you'll decrease flex in your right knee, the works. The goal is to leave it high (or make it feel higher) during the backswing. I'd do a LOT of these. I have a video I can share with you, but I'll PM it to you as it's not on YouTube.

During your regular swings, simply feel that the right hip gets as HIGH as possible as it rotates around slightly. HIGH.

Fixing your hips will fix your head. And clean up a lot on the downswing.

Currently your ass slides forward on the backswing so it has nowhere to go on the downswing. Your arms gain depth and never get out, because hips forward/head back is the easiest procedure to draw the ball. Your pivot stalls and your arms fly off your body, rolling the clubface and hands a ton.

That won't all be fixed, but it will clean up, and the next step is a follow-through piece.

Tried the "propping" feel, which I liked. My head was staying much more steady, but my hips were still moving forward. More work ahead, of course.

Yes. Do it MOAR MOAR MOAR. Put a stick or something back there - maybe your bag - and keep your right hip against it (it can rotate of course, but try to feel like it stays back and up too) - and keep the hips BACK.

Watch some videos of Sergio and Monty. Stick your belt or belly out pointing backwards.

Did you know that Ponkapoag was once seriously investigated to host a U.S. Open? As in recently, like in 2000? They couldn't find a good enough composite from the 36 holes, though. Seriously.

First, these are the pictures that need changing:

Clubhead is out, yet you're square as heck at impact and then your arms FLY off your chest with a high rate of closure. You're TRYING to draw the ball, but the way you load some things in transition is preventing it currently.

FWIW Dave's way of saying it, included for one bold part:

Quote:

IMO stays closed so he can do everything he can to hit "out"... just can't do it with the loading pattern from 3.5 to 4.2.... Tim Clark feels and reverse that whole thing. That would clean it up fast IMO. Wedges dump like mad due to all the stuff going on of course. Strengthen grip some too.

Should feel like he never loads three then loads the heck out of it and "counter" rotates his left arm coming down.

Did you know that Ponkapoag was once seriously investigated to host a U.S. Open? As in recently, like in 2000? They couldn't find a good enough composite from the 36 holes, though. Seriously.

I did know that! From what I've heard, once they gave the first public-course U.S. Open to Bethpage Black the USGA went around looking for others near metropolitan areas that they could use. Ponkapoag is a Donald Ross design which must have drawn them towards it, plus it's on a huge large tract of land and right off I-95. I've played there probably 10 times since 2006ish, and have never seen more than 27 of the 36 holes open. (I've never heard anything about that other than just general disrepair. It's too the point where the closed holes are physically blocked off.)

Decent design, but it would take a TON of work to get it major-worthy, and they'd need like a decade to get it into Open shape. They'd have to completely redo the drainage, gut the greens, and lengthen most holes. And then they'd actually have to pay the money for water.

If I'm going to play a Ross-designed muni course near Boston though, I definitely prefer George Wright. They've put a lot of money into it recently (apparently the city of Boston lets them run basically independent now, so they can use the profits to improve the course), and have completely redone several holes. GR could never host a major though, It couldn't be lengthened much and they don't even have a driving range.

Also, I went to the range and attempted to heed your advice. More later.